Interference
by CliveLive49
Summary: I dislike the telephone, as a rule. I dislike the way it redefines the rules of polite conversation. The way it disguises so many small clues to the psychology of the individual. The way it distorts the voice and warps the intent of one's words. Very, very angsty.
1. Chapter 1

It is the second night of Mr. Wooster's absence, and I am sitting in the straight-backed chair in the corner of my bedroom, halfway through both a book and a cigarette. I am startled slightly when the telephone rings.

I extinguish my cigarette carefully, so as not to ruin the rest of it, and prop it against the lip of my small glass ashtray. I take my leather bookmark from the side table and tuck it into my page and lay the book beside the ashtray. Then I make my way into the living room to answer the phone.

Mr. Wooster has been gone for only two nights, and yet his absence is palpable. I am unbalanced without the tiny things he leaves out of place. The cushions in which he leaves his imprint, the cigarette ends he leaves in cocktail glasses, the fingerprints he leaves on the piano lid. I miss the million tiny purposes he daily makes for me. Much of the time, there seems to be nothing to do with my hands.

I pick up the telephone on its seventh ring.

'What ho, Jeeves,' comes his voice, echoing and tinny in the bell of the earpiece. I can hear the soft, rumbling murmur of the many miles between us.

Mr. Wooster's telephone is an elegant machine. Its numbers are Bakelite, though its handle is ivory. It is perhaps a little ostentatious for my taste, though I cannot deny that it is pleasing to hold and to speak into.

I dislike the telephone, however, as a rule. I dislike the way it redefines the rules of polite conversation. The way it disguises so many small clues to the psychology of the individual. The way it distorts the voice and warps the intent of one's words.

'Good Evening, Sir,' I say. I cannot bring myself to begin a telephone conversation with 'Hello.' I greet him as I would do were we speaking face-to-face. 'How is Totleigh Towers?'

'Oh,' his voice resounds after a slight pause, 'I'm there no longer, Jeeves. Made my escape last night, don't you know? The Auntly One was planning to hitch-' his voice dissolves into a cacophony of crackles, resolving at last into, '-trouble than they're worth, what?'

'I fear, Sir,' I say, 'That there may be some interference on the line. Could you please repeat your last sentence?'

I also dislike the mechanical shortcomings of this technology. The difficulty it creates in communicating, when it claims to make communication so much easier. It is hard enough to say what one means without the hiss and the splutter of inadequate machinery as one's intermediary. I relish progress. Science. Discovery. But I am impatient for a time when the faults in this invention are ironed out. I view them with the same disdain as unwanted creases in Mr. Wooster's suit trousers.

'Sorry, Old Thing,' he says, speaking more loudly and deliberately now than perhaps he needs to. 'Think there's a whopper of a storm somewhere in the Midlands. Interfering with the line, no doubt. Never mind. Not important anyhow. Heading back tomorrow, in any case. I'll explain all then. How's the old homestead?'

'All is well, Sir,' I report. 'Somewhat quiet. I look forward to your return.'

'I too, Jeeves. I too.'

'When can I anticipate your arrival, Sir?'

'Around noon, I should expect.'

'Very good, Sir.'

I shall expect him around three in the afternoon.

'Have a pot of tea on for me, would you?' he asks. 'And get in some of those good Turkish gaspers. You know the ones I like, Jeeves.'

'Very good, Sir. What would you like for luncheon?'

'Any gammon hanging about?'

'I believe a joint could be acquired, Sir.'

'Topping good news.'

'Indeed, Sir.'

We lapse into silence for a moment. I cannot help but feel that there is some other reason for the call. He is impulsive, and would think nothing usually of returning early unannounced. Without observing his face, however, and the expression in his eye – the movements of his limbs and the tilt of his head – I cannot be certain of what he is hiding.

'Jeeves,' comes his voice, slightly reedy and urgent, 'Are you still there?'

'Yes, Sir,' I say. 'I was waiting for you to say something, Sir.'

'Were you?' he says, sounding surprised. 'Bit of pressure, what?'

'I intended none, Sir,' I say.

'Oh, I know that, Old Thing.' He clears his throat quite loudly. 'Always felt a bit rummy, to me, what?'

'Sir?'

'This contraption.'

'The telephone, Sir?'

'That's the blighter. Gives me the willies. Not being able to see the face of one's conversational partner.'

'It is somewhat disconcerting, Sir, I agree.'

'Sort of opens the back door and all the windows for the wily cat burglar of dishonesty, if you ask me.'

'In certain circumstances, Sir, that might indeed be the case.'

'Mind you, in others...' He falls silent again for a long moment, and I begin to fear we have lost our connection entirely. With this phrase, I realise that his voice is slightly slurred. It is not, as I had thought, the distortion of the telephone line. He has certainly been drinking.

'In others, Sir?' I ask, a feeling of foreboding tickling up my spine.

'In others, it might be easier, somehow,' he goes on. 'Easier to say things. Things that one never...' His voice trails off once more, swallowed up by the ghostly hiss and crackle of the line. I am unsure whether his words have been lost in the static, or whether he is simply lost for words.

'Is there something troubling you, Sir?' I say, at length. 'Any matter in which I might be of assistance?' I enunciate each word carefully, to be sure that it reaches him safe and whole.

'I say, Jeeves,' he says, 'Have you been smoking?'

This question is unexpected, and perturbs me slightly. I instinctively clear my throat, covering the mouthpiece so that he cannot hear my cough.

'I have, Sir,' I say. 'I was smoking in my room when I heard the telephone.'

I try my very best not to sound defensive.

'I can hear it, Jeeves,' he says. 'In your voice.' There is something in _his_ voice when he says, this. Something low, and warm and approving. It strikes me as most peculiar, and makes me somewhat anxious.

'I apologise, Sir,' I say.

'Don't,' he says, at once. 'Don't apologise, Jeeves.' I hear the commotion of shifting fabric and creak of bedsprings in the background. His steady, slow breathing persists quietly beneath the static. 'I rather like it,' he says.

I feel at once as though I must sit down. My fingers tight around the ivory handle of the receiver, I step backwards and lower myself into the cushioned chair I know is directly behind me, beside the telephone table. I would never dream of sitting in Mr. Wooster's physical presence, and this feels very much like such a transgression. My palms begin to sweat slightly.

'I hope the facilities of the guesthouse are adequate to your needs, Sir,' I say, knowing that my voice sounds slightly forced and hollow.

'Topping, Jeeves,' he says. 'Topping. Good horseradish. No room service, though.' He coughs. 'Let's talk, Jeeves.'

'I was under the impression that we were, Sir.'

'Properly, Jeeves. I mean let's talk properly.'

'Do you not think it might be best to retire now, Sir' I ask. I do not add, 'To sleep it off,' though it is clearly implied.

'Tosh, Jeeves,' he says. 'I've had one or two, I'll not deny it. Completely compos-mentos, though, I can assure you.'

'I am relieved to hear it, Sir,' I say. I am, however, feeling increasingly tense and unsure. I am cut off from Mr. Wooster – I cannot see him. Miles separate us, and yawn like a chasm in between. Yet he is whispering in my ear, quite intimately. 'I feel I must ask, Sir,' I say, 'whether this is a private line?'

'Naturally, Jeeves,' he says. 'Naturally.' There follows another long pause, during which I hear the bedsprings creak once more, then the sharp snick of a striking match and the crackle of burning paper and tobacco. 'I'll be honest with you,' he says, at last. 'I've had more than one or two.'

'Indeed, Sir?' I attempt to sound surprised.

'Yes. Needed a bit of Dutch Courage, what?'

My heart palpitates rather unpleasantly. Several possible exchanges unfold in my imagination from this point, and I feel unequipped for all of them.

'Why would you need courage to telephone me, Sir?' I ask. Then, quite suddenly afraid of his answer, I continue to talk. 'All is in order here. Mr. Chuffnell called yesterday to enquire as to the date of your return. I gave him a forecast of three days, though it seems now it was inaccurate.'

'I've been wondering,' he says, rather dreamily. 'Wondering.' I have seldom heard him so contemplative. So strange.

'Perhaps we should continue this conversation when you return, Sir. It may be more appropriately conducted face-to-face-'

'-No, Jeeves. No. I couldn't do it face-to-face. I've thought about it. I've tried. I've almost... once or twice. But I think I could broach the subject now, what? The thing is, you see, that-'

'-Do you wish me to acquire some of the Bergamot soap, Sir, that you appreciated during our recent hotel stay in Harrogate? Or would you prefer your usual brand?'

'Really, Jeeves, I'd like you to listen to me for just a moment-'

'-I fear it may be difficult to find, but I might call the hotel and enquire as to their supplier-'

'-Jeeves, I do wish you would hear me out, Old Thing-'

'-Unless of course they order it in bulk from a catering supplier, in which case I could seek out a comparable substitute-'

'-I know, Old Thing, that you... you know. That you watch me.'

I swallow hard against a thickness in my throat.

Part of me had been holding out hope that perhaps he was leading up to a reprimand for disposing of his favourite lavender tie, or the announcement that the promised trip to Japan in July would now be impossible. Or that he was sick of me, tired of my arrogance, and had written me a severance check that would arrive in the post within three days.

'I haven't the least idea to what you're referring, Sir.' I keep my voice steady. Devoid of anxiety, defensiveness or displeasure. All of these feelings stick in my throat like fish bones, tearing at the flesh there, as I force the words past them.

'Yes you do,' he says, his voice low – almost a whisper. 'You know you do. You'll deny it. I knew you'd deny it. But you know what I'm talking about. You watch me.'

The ivory of the phone handle has grown very hot in my hand.

'I must object, Sir. Whatever you think you have perceived, you're mistaken. I-'

He interrupts, breaking every rule of conversational etiquette to smithereens. The telephone gives one an excuse to do such things.

'-You watch me in the mornings. Before I wake. Before I let you know I'm awake.'

I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. There is no other possible protest to make. No pretence I can construct that would deny it effectively.

'If you were aware of it, Sir, I cannot comprehend why you'd let me continue.'

For I do.

I do stand and watch him. In the mornings, I make my way to his room some length of time before he prefers to waken. I do not knock upon his door to rouse him when I bring in his breakfast tray. I open it quietly, and stand just inside the door, occasionally for upwards of fifteen minutes, before I step forward and cough gently, to alert him to my presence. It is difficult to say precisely why I do this. There is something indefinable about his softly breathing shape beneath the covers that arrests me. It has become habit to watch him in this way, and I find I must continue.

It is appalling, unthinkable and completely unacceptable, however, that if he has noticed it, he has chosen not to mention it for the several months since the habit arose. Even more unmentionable that he should choose to mention it now, when it seems very much like an accusation of something horrible and inappropriate.

'It's alright, Jeeves,' he says. 'It's alright. I don't mind in the least. That's what I wanted to tell you... I...'

And with that, he begins a confused and disjointed monologue that gradually reveals sentiments too meaningful, pertinent and shocking to entertain. His words are erratic, but far from nervous. They are uttered loudly, almost boorishly, with an unhappy, meandering sort of resignation, weaving and lurching from notion to notion, like a melancholy drunk staggering home.

'Beazels, Jeeves, I think you know that – it never felt quite The Thing, you know, and of course at Eton... Well. There was a certain Master... and naturally I was a fag, and these things – what I mean is... I've never felt quite... though I don't think I could keep it to myself any longer. Wouldn't be any sort of life, what? And it's a risk. But you're an open-minded sort of chap, aren't you? And even if you left me, and never came back, I don't think you'd go as far as to... You see, if you read _The Portrait of Mr. W.H,_ I... And you will have done. You've read everything. I just feel so blasted... And you've helped me with everything else, Jeeves. Every other problem I've had, you've fished me right out of the soup and as I've no one else to turn to I thought that I might prevail upon you again. In this circumstance. I don't think that-'

'-You are rambling, Sir, quite terribly,' I interrupt, simply because I cannot bear to hear any more.

I am unsure of how I came upon the knowledge of human sexual desire and the ways of satiating it. No one – not my father, not my schoolmaster, not a friend or a priest or an uncle – ever sat me down and explained to me the Facts of Life. They dawned upon me as I grew from a child into a man – pieced them together from half-eavesdropped conversations, books fictional and non-fictional and the stirrings and urges of my own body.

At thirteen, whilst working at a girls' school, I befriended a fellow page boy for a time. A year older than me, he seemed a year younger, with a slight build, watery eyes and fair hair. During long nights in our shared room, I would sometimes listen to his steady, even breathing, and know that he was awake, pretending to sleep. Occasionally, when undressing, I would deliberately face him, so that he could see my privates as they were unveiled, before I dressed in my pyjamas.

One afternoon, he and I were locked together in a small, stinking outhouse as punishment for borrowing a book from the Music Mistress's private chambers without permission. I spent the entire three hours in a state of nervous excitement, my skin prickling with goose bumps, my breath coming fast and my heart thundering in my chest at the closeness of his form in the pitch black.

I seldom revisit these memories during the day.

Sometimes, however, in the quiet of my room at night, I wonder that perhaps these things might, if I had been determined enough, have evolved into something more intense, complete and fulfilling. Occasionally, when I look upon Mr. Wooster, in the mornings when I bring his tea, before I wake him by parting the curtains, thoughts of this time bloom in my mind like sleeping flowers opening. And the following night, in the quiet of my room, my memories mix themselves with thoughts of Mr. Wooster. My mind spawns fantasies too perverse to entertain in the daylight.

The things I think, I shiver to acknowledge.

'Please, Sir-'

'-I lie very still, Jeeves. I hear you. I know you're there. I know you're there for ever so long.'

'Please-'

'-Ever so long before I open my eyes. What are you looking at? Are you looking at my golden hair? My sleep-softened expression? My limbs, splayed in repose?'

'If you do not cease this line of questioning, Sir, I will end this call.'

'Are you looking at my cock tenting the bedclothes?'

I draw in a sharp breath at this. The obscenity stings me like a slap across the face, making me blink and swallow. My cheeks begin to tingle and a shivering, electric ribbon of feeling ties itself in a bow just above my groin.

'I know your darkest secret, Jeeves,' he says, with some bravado, the falsity of which is betrayed by a crack and a waver on the word 'secret.'

My breath is coming fast and heavy. Bouncing back at me, warm and moist from the mouthpiece of the telephone.

'It's that you're sensual. Wanton. You think and feel things you'd never want anyone to know. You have strange fantasies and wicked thoughts. The things you want I couldn't possibly imagine.' He might be reciting lines from a play. He has rehearsed this little speech.

'Sir,' I say, and the word is barely audible amidst my ragged breath.

'Tell me your worst one,' he demands, with a clear note of anxiety in his voice.

And it springs, fully formed, to the front of my mind. Vivid, gaudily painted, glorious and horrific. The one that I take out late at night, when I pant all on my own into my pillow. That I have never acknowledged in the daytime. The thought of voicing it is abhorrent.

'Fine,' he says. 'I'll tell you mine, shall I?'

Still I do not reply.

'I will,' he says. 'I'll tell you. I always imagine I'll be playing my piano – it doesn't matter what song – and you'll come in from the Junior Ganymede.'

'Sir, if you say this, we cannot-'

'-Only – don't ask me why, perhaps you were celebrating the birthday of a fellow member, or some such – you'll be drunk.'

'Sir-' I consider putting the phone down. I could, and retire to my room. Go to bed. But I am trembling. Truly trembling. In a way I never have before, without a fever for excuse. If I were to leave things here, it might just kill me, like a sudden shock into wakefulness might kill a sleepwalker.

'-Not fall-down drunk, not quite. But far enough under the surface that your cheeks are red and you're muddled and slow and can't quite walk in a straight line. And you're embarrassed, naturally, but too foxed to care too much. And I have to help you to bed. And on the way there's some talk, some revelation or confession and other such expositional necessaries – changes, this bit, sometimes you tell me you've loved me all along, sometimes you fall against me and feel that I'm hard – and the upshot is that when you fall into bed, you pull me down with you. And from there, you let me... You let me-'

This is the moment in which I lose myself and find my voice. It is partly irritation at the impertinence of his fantasy, partly anger that he has forced this awkward thing out into the open, partly fierce and inconvenient arousal that prompts me to say,

'Is this what you want from me, then, Sir? You want me helpless and incapacitated beneath you? Yours to do anything you want with? This is your fantasy?'

He entirely misses the anger in my voice.

'Yes,' he says, his tone ardent. 'Yes. God, yes.'

'I do not know what to say to that, Sir. I really do not.' I feel in a dream. I look at the whiskey decanter on the side table ten feet away, and think of draining the thing. I lay the phone down on the table.

'Say what you bally well feel, Man!' I hear leak quietly into the still of the room – a small voice from the abandoned telephone as I cross to the drinks table and pour myself two fingers of neat whiskey.

'Jeeves,' I hear his voice chirrup from the phone. 'Jeeves?'

I drink it in one, pour myself another and drink that, too.

'Jeeves? Where've you gone, Man?'

I pour myself four fingers and carry the glass back to the telephone. I sit again and pick up the receiver.

'Very well,' I say, with no apology for leaving him hanging. 'I feel _you_ are drunk, Sir, and not in your right mind. I feel that anything you have said this evening will seem ridiculous come the morning.'

'No, you don't.'

'I do, Sir.'

'You feel differently than that.'

'I do not, Sir.' But I do. All the things I feel gather behind my clenched teeth, knocking furiously on the back of them to be released. The whiskey floods my face with warmth. My lips begin to tingle. My tongue feels thicker and looser with each passing second.

'You do, Jeeves. Out with it, Man.'

And so I do.

'I feel, Sir, that if you were to try and use me like that, no matter how drunk I might be, I would take you by the arms and turn you over and come down on top of you with such force you would be astonished.'

At this he lets out an odd sound – a low hiss like a kettle just beginning to boil. And from this point, there is no more pretence between us. No more hedging around the crux of the matter. There is no point. I know that he has decided subtlety is too exhausting, and I, too, am growing weary of the game. Tired of navigating the treacherous minefield of feudal respect. I never thought I would be.

I decide then, with startling suddenness, that I will allow this. This is how it will be. We will whisper these things to each other in the quiet of the night, with hundreds of miles between us. I will humour him, and unburden myself. We will purge ourselves of this thing. And then perhaps when we see each other once more, we can continue as we have done.

'I think about you like I shouldn't, Jeeves,' he says, his voice low and hoarse. 'For a while now. And if I can't bring myself to do anything about it, I can at least talk to you about it. Say the things I want. The things I want to...'

'If you feel you must, Sir,' I say, feeling everything I thought I was slipping away, speaking impatiently now, 'Then tell me. I cannot stop you. Could not. Tell me, Sir. Then we will never speak of it again.'

'Yes,' he says. 'Never again. Good Lord, I want you in so many ways, Jeeves. I've thought about us doing all sorts of things together. All sorts of wicked things...'

'What sorts of things, Sir?' My voice wavers. I take a swallow of whiskey.

'You know, Jeeves.'

'I do not.'

'You do.'

'I do not know. Let us be frank. Would you have us... kissing?'

'Yes, Jeeves. Yes. I would have us kissing. With open mouths. With your tongue in my mouth, and mine in yours.'

I am immediately, almost painfully hard. I feel almost sick with the suddenness of my complete arousal – it makes my head spin and my stomach lurch.

'Would you have us touching, Sir?'

'Yes, Jeeves.'

'Me touching you?' I swallow the rest of the whiskey in the glass, following the burn of it as it washes down my throat and knowing the moment it hits my stomach, leeching through the lining to set my blood on fire.

'Yes.'

'Where? Where would you like me to touch you?'

'My chest.'

'Your chest?'

'My legs.'

'Yes?'

'My stomach.'

'Yes?'

He falls silent.

'Your prick?' I ask.

'God. God. Yes. Jeeves. If you touched my prick...'

I can scarcely believe he is coaxing this talk from me. My vocabulary is extensive and my love of words passionate. There are some words, however, that I have never said, even on my own, at night into my pillow. Words that, when they do echo in my mind's ear, hollow, resonating, guilty whispers, I hurriedly muffle with thoughts of silver polish and the creases in suit trousers. I am saying them now, however. Now they are oozing from my throat like rancid meat churned out of a mince grinder. I can taste them, raw and putrid as they slide over my dry tongue.

'Jeeves. Please. Tell me your greatest fantasy. Tell me what you think of.'

'It would shock you, Sir.'

'It wouldn't.'

'It may.'

'I think not.'

'Besides, Sir, I have many. I have many. That I dip into and out of at my leisure, in the dead of the night. All of them atrocious.'

'Tell me, Jeeves. Tell me them all. One by one.'

'Do you have the patience, Sir?'

'Of a Saint.'

'Very well, Sir. The first one, Sir... My favourite. I am sitting by you at the piano.'

'Good.'

'Do not interrupt. I am sitting by you at the piano, and you are playing a song I dislike. Impertinently, I place my hands atop yours on the keys to still them. Then I lift one of your hands to my mouth and slide your finger – the index finger of your right hand – into my mouth, and suck upon it.'

'Good Lord.'

'I suck upon it hard. I can taste the polish from the piano keys and the warm, dusty flavour of your freshly manicured fingernail. I hold your hand and pull your finger into and out of my mouth. It is just this. For such a long time.'

'Just the finger, Jeeves?'

'Just that, Sir.'

'Another.'

I take a deep breath.

'In another, Sir, we are at Totleigh Towers. We are visiting. In the middle of the night, when the household is abed, I come up from the servants' quarters to find you in your room. I slide under the covers and rouse you with my mouth.'

'Good grief.'

'I am in my nightclothes, and so are you. I turn you over, my hands on your buttocks, and I open you. I spread you apart. I kneel behind you and look at your arsehole. You do not say a word, but I can hear you, breathing heavily, wanting me to. I lick at you, and you moan. I push my tongue inside of you, and you moan the louder still. I pull down my pyjamas and take out my cock and roger you...' I can hear him panting on the other end of the line, and I am panting just as loudly. There seems to be more breath pouring from me than words – syllables groan past like moaning ghosts, snagging with surprise on the sharp corners of consonants – 'All the while I think of your Aunt and your cousin Angela. Seppings and Anatole. All of them sleeping lightly, their dreams invaded by the steady, quiet thump of the bedstead against the wall as I bugger you.'

I could not stop now if I wanted to.

'In another, as I hold out your towel for you after you bathe, you sit up and open the front of my trousers, and I drop the towel and feed you my prick. You take it deep into your throat – so far that you gag and your mouth convulses around me. I do not let you go. You are enjoying it. I pull out – I see your spittle along my length – and slide back into you, and I am hard, so hard... so hard and so hot that I feel I might shatter like glass in a fire were your teeth to knock against me.'

'Oh God, Jeeves,' he says. 'You're making me mad.'

I am unrepentant. I am taking my revenge on him for leading us down this path. If he's greedy for me, I'll sate his hunger with more than he can chew. He can choke on me.

'Could you spend, Sir, just from listening to me? Just from hearing me talk about my hard prick in your mouth? How I'd fuck your mouth until your lips were red and its corners were sore and split?'

Perhaps, though, I have underestimated his appetite.

'I could, Jeeves,' he says, without hesitation. 'I could. But I'm touching myself. Are you?'

'Yes, Sir. I am sitting on the cushioned chair in the living room, with my trousers rolled down to my ankles. If you were here, you could see my socks and my suspenders and my spread legs. You could see my open shirt. I have my hand in my lap, and my prick in my hand. It is so hard, Sir. I can barely stand it... It is wet and it is glistening and it is red and I am pulling at it with long, firm strokes. It is leaking for you. With every stroke it grows harder. I am holding myself in check by the... the thinnest of threads.'

Every word of this is the truth.

'I say. I...'

'Tell me what you are doing, Sir.'

'I don't know whether I can.'

'Yes. You can. You will tell me.'

I thrill with the irreverence of it. Ordering him shamelessly. I do not know whether I wish to be the master or the servant. Either would please me, at this moment. Either would make my stomach clench and my cock stand straighter.

'I'm on my back on the bed,' he says. 'I have no jacket or waistcoat. My shirt is fastened but my trousers... My trousers...'

'This is no time to lose your nerve, Sir.'

'Dammit, I'm f... I'm frigging myself. I'm frigging myself so hard. Thinking of you. Can you hear me? Can you hear my hand slap against my skin?'

'Yes.'

'Now tell me your darkest fantasy. The one you daren't tell me. The one you think will shock me.'

'You may dislike me, Sir.'

'Then I'll dislike you. I'll fire you as soon as I get home.'

'Do not joke, Sir.'

'Tell me.'

'Very well. It is nowhere remarkable. In your bed, or mine. Yours. Let it be yours.'

'Fine. We're in my bed. Go on.'

'You are naked. I am naked. Our skin touches everywhere. You sit up on your haunches, the bedclothes around your shoulders like a robe. You tell me to touch myself. I am too modest. So you begin to persuade me. You talk to me. You say such things.'

'What do I say?'

'You call me a servant. And direct me. And order me. You sit heavy on my legs and do not let me move. You tell me I am cheap, and low, and reprehensible. And I touch myself to your words. Like I am touching myself now, I pull on my prick until it grows stiff and wet and aching for you, until I am on the edge. The very edge. And you talk to me all the while. I see you, looking at my prick, looking at me pulling at myself, and I see that you are aroused. After minutes of this, I come off, up across my belly. And you lean forward and take your hand and rub my seed into my stomach. My stomach is sensitive, Sir...'

'You're a strange old bird, aren't you?' His words are playful but his voice is thick and strained.

'And then when my stomach is wet and shining from my own seed, tingling, pink with the flush of pleasure, you dip your head and lick my seed from me.'

'Strange old bird.'

'Lick it all from my stomach, until my stomach is glistening with saliva, not seed. You do not swallow. You keep my seed upon your tongue, and you lean up to kiss me with your mouth full.'

I am pulling at my prick so hard that I fear I might hurt myself. And I can, indeed, hear Mr. Wooster. I can hear the slap of his hand against his skin, quietly, underneath his heavy, laboured breath. The telephone receiver is held tight between my ear and my shoulder, and my neck is bent at an uncomfortable angle. I am only dimly aware of the ache.

I let out a low, guttural sound and spend, powerfully, up across my belly.

Seconds later, the receiver emits sound so nearly identical that I think it is an echo. Mr. Wooster has spent too.

'Lord, Jeeves,' he says. 'Lord. Good Lord.'

I suck in desperate breaths, my head spinning, my neck hurting now quite keenly. I drop my prick and take the telephone in my hand. Looking down at the mess on myself, the thought of Mr. Wooster's tongue lapping it from me seems at once less keenly arousing and more disconcertingly perverse.

I should fetch a handkerchief. Tidy myself. Prepare for Mr. Wooster's arrival tomorrow.

Though I cannot imagine speaking to him face to face ever again.


	2. Chapter 2

The bally train is two hours late. I don't know why I didn't take the motor car. Wait. Of course I do – it's having its upholstery re-done. McIntosh rather tore into it with his teeth last time we had him in there. Blasted hound. It was rather splendid red leather upholstery, too. I do hope they replace it in the same colour.

I don't go back to the flat right away. I feel it more prudent to pop by the drones for a snifter or three. Bingo, Chuffy and the lads have missed me, naturally, and I spend a good three hours there, catching up on events and knocking back glassfuls of the needful with considerable gusto.

I should've been tireder, perhaps, though I'd slept for a spot on the train back. There were distinctly rummy dreams, I vaguely recall. In one, I'm sure I was at the drones playing dinner roll cricket with Jeeves, who was wearing my heather-mixture lounge suit. He hit the roll quite hard, and as it struck me in the chest it split open and burst like a cow's stomach, splattering gore all down my favourite pinstripe. I recall thinking, 'Gosh now. How's Jeeves ever going to get this stain out?' Then Chuffy Chuffnell rode by on a zebra. I woke with a feeling of foreboding, and something of a headache.

By the time I arrive at the old homestead, in upshot, it's past six. It being Midsummer, it's still fairly scorching outside, though I find that the living room curtains are closed. The early-evening light through the drapes rather gives the place a queer, warm, underwater feeling, which is only enhanced by the fuzzy tingle in my limbs from the drinks at the club.

Quite what I'll do when I see him again, I'm not desperately sure.

I've tried not to trouble the old onion with it too much since last night. The more I think of it, the more I feel a little like that time I swam out too far in the River Wharf on a camping holiday and got sucked under by a strong current. When I finally managed to struggle to the surface, I found myself a mile-and-a-half downstream. It shook me up, I can tell you.

And last night I got carried away by a frightfully powerful tide of sorts, I'll admit. To labour a meta-whatsit, I'd been considering dipping the Wooster toes in the water for a fair amount of time. Looking at Jeeves, I mean, and wondering if the quiet, intent looks he gave me were any indication of a fascination beyond the feudal. I've heard tell of the sorts of chaps who mess about with the Help, don't you know, and dashed if I wasn't keen on being one of those, though if the Help wanted to mess about with the Young Master then perhaps it wouldn't be such a liberty.

It was partly the chap's fault himself, as it happens, that I took the plunge at all – for the past seven-month he's been standing staring at me in the mornings, stock-still, holding that bally tea tray for an age or three before he coughs to rouse me. I crack my eyes open just a slit and see him, with the oddest look on his face.

It's been getting on my last nerve, to be perfectly truthful.

And things rather came to a head, if you will, at Totleigh.

The whole weekend was, in brief, a form of living hell. The weather was so blasted hot that I was sweating like a broiled salmon even in the lightest of suits. Aunt Dahlia introduced me to a perfectly amiable but rather insipid girl with an underbite by the name of Deidre and began to suggest wedding venues, and to top it all off I turned my ankle on a ceramic hedgehog in the corner of the ornamental garden. As a result, I wasn't quite myself when it came to Sunday night's dinner. The meandered into the territory of matrimony and whatnot, as it is wont to do when there are Aunts present, and Aunt D. looked set to announce my engagement to Deidre without so much as a 'May I, Bertram?' or a 'By your leave'.

It wasn't a pattern to which I was at all un-used. I can't think, then, why all of a sudden I was seized by a sense of supreme injustice halfway through the veal cutlet and said, quite loudly,

'Do you know, I don't think I shall ever get married? The Fairer Sex is all well and good, what, but it's the bachelor life for me, don't you know?'

Aunt Dahlia, I believe, was quite unprepared for this improprietous blow, and remarked in a hesitant tone to the party assembled,

'Of course, Bertram hasn't been himself of late. I think the heat disagrees with him. Doesn't it, Bertram?'

I don't know quite what had come over me – perhaps it _was_ the heat – but I exploded with,

'No, it jolly well doesn't. Nor does Deidre. Nor does that dashed ceramic hedgehog in the corner of the garden. In fact, none of this agrees with me, and I agree with none of it. Tootle-oo.'

With that, I took my leave. After five glasses of Bordeaux at dinner, the drive to the nearest guest house was fairly hairy to say the least, but I made it in one piece. Feeling not a little fragile, I then knocked back a good seven-and-a-half brandy and sodas in my room, and began to think on Jeeves, and to eye the phone on the bed table with some fascination.

And now.

Dash it.

Now that I've heard Jeeves' voice say things I'd never even entertained in my rummiest daydreams, I just don't know. Don't you know?

I just don't know where we will go from here.

I'm not sure I want to know, if it means that I'll be disappointed.

'I say, Jeeves,' I call out, eyeing the kitchen door with some trepidation, 'The curtains are drawn. Has someone died?'

There is no answer. The place is deathly quiet. Nowhere is there hide or hair of faithful manservant.

I worry for a moment that perhaps someone _has_ died. Perhaps that feeling of foreboding on the train was a little tinge of the psychic whatsit.

Or, perhaps he has left me.

Perhaps it will be easier this way.

Though I will have to pour my own drinks. Which I do, with all due haste. I mix myself a brandy and soda (not all the soda) and sip at it pensively, standing in the middle of the empty living room, studying the closed curtains.

I nearly jump out of my skin when the phone rings.

Shoving my b & s down on the coffee table, I charge over to the phone and slap the receiver against the Wooster eardrum.

'What ho?' I say, hoping with some desperation that it isn't Aunt Dahlia. I shall, I know, have to prostate myself before her in apology, at some point or other. If 'prostate' is what I'm groping for.

'Good Evening, Sir,' says a familiar voice. It sets the heart thundering in the Wooster chest.

He sounds, however, not at all like he did last night.

He sounds, in a word, perturbed.

'Jeeves, my Man,' I say, the voice-box a little quivery. 'Where the devil are you?'

'I am in the telephone call box at the end of the street, Sir,' he says, his tone distinctly soupy. I suppose it has every right to be. I can hear the hum of the traffic in the street behind him.

'The telephone call box?' I ask, repeating his words in that rummy way one does during a telephone conversation. As though one might have an audience that's missing the other half of the chat, and you want to fill them in. 'Why on Earth?' I ask.

'I felt it would be prudent to speak with you once more over the telephone, Sir, before we met again face-to-face.'

'You are coming back then, Jeeves? I mean, you've not...'

'No, Sir. I will return presently. I must admit that I have been monitoring the flat, watching for your return, for the past three hours.'

I let out a breath I didn't quite know I'd been holding.

'I thought you'd biffed off,' I say, at last, with something of the mournful in my voice.

There is a long pause.

'I had considered it, Sir.'

'I thought you might've done,' I admit.

He falls silent for an age or three. Eventually I whack up the ginger to say,

'Jeeves, I-'

But he interrupts before I can get going.

'-I crave your assurance, Sir, that things will be no different between us from this point onwards. I do not think I could continue, Sir, if anything was to change as a result of our conversation last night. This is of utmost importance to me, Sir.' He speaks rather as though he were impressing upon me the necessity of wearing the blue tie with the brown suit.

I must say I'm not awfully surprised. But, as I've said before, perhaps it will be easier this way. To truly do as we discussed on the phone last night. Carry on as before, I mean.

I believe I can do it. I must do it. If I'm to function. And it goes without saying that I can't function without Jeeves. He's the cork that keeps me afloat, what?

And if I can never quite look at the fellow in the same way again – never think of him without thinking of his description of himself half-undressed and tugging on himself – then what of it?

What of it, indeed?

'Well, absolutely. Absolutely, Old Thing,' I say. 'Say no more. I shouldn't have said what I did, you know. It was wrong of me. I was fairly well under the surface, last night, and... I mean. It was probably not cricket of me to drag all of that up. Not cricket at all.'

'Perhaps not, Sir.' His voice sounds rather more distant than it did last night, even though he's a hundred miles closer to me.

'We will say no more,' I go on, feeling as though I'm babbling dreadfully. 'Of it. No more. Of it. Shall be said. By either of us. Ever again. It's done, and it's said, but it shan't be spoken of again. We'll be just as we were. Biffing along with jollity. We'll go to Japan in a few weeks, what? Just as we planned? Eat some sushi, or live snakes, or whatnot.'

There follows something of a pause. I wrap the phone cord around my little finger and get it rather tangled. It takes a few seconds to extricate myself. My little finger is rather red at the end of it.

'Thank you, Sir,' he says, at last. He does sound genuinely grateful. I'm pleased that I've pleased him – it happens so rarely, don't you know?

Still, I can't help but feel something of a pang.

It's just that...

It's just.

Ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, something about the whole 'let's play weddings – you be the groom and I'll be the bride' wheeze felt 'off.' And playing Doctors in the potting shed with Cousin Angela never did appeal, you know.

And about a year ago, I fell down with influenza. And Jeeves shoved a thermometer in my mouth and laid the back of his hand on my scorching brow, and I recall knowing, even through the dementia of fever, precisely how I'd like to play Doctors, and with whom.

The telephone last night. That was the first attempt I've ever made towards making something of what I feel. And I feel rather pipped at the post, don't you know? Like a favourite who's fallen at the first hedge.

It's strange, what's descended upon me in the last few days. A sense, I feel, that, despite all my goods and chattels and life of ease and whatnot, I don't quite deserve the rum hand that I've been dealt. And I feel all of a sudden compelled to do something about it. Take a stand, like those fellows on their soapboxes at Speaker's Corner.

I think on this for some time. And my mind – for all that it's not my most efficient organ – rather comes to a conclusion.

'Don't mention it, Old Thing.' I shove the receiver back down onto the telephone.

Then I move to stand very close to the door, just to the right of it. I wait. I count seven minutes and thirty-three seconds on my fob watch.

And then I hear Jeeves' key in the lock.

He pours himself into the flat, immaculately got-up in his valet's togs, but looking a little strained around the eyes. His features look strangely defined in the shadowy room.

I take him rather roughly by the shoulders and press his back against the door. It impacts with rather a rummy 'thump.'

He gasps in a species of surprise and wrenches my hands from him, and we wrestle for some seconds, until I have his wrists pinned up against the wood. I feel the steady thump of blood against my palm. It might be the pulse in his wrist, or the pulse in my own hand. Or both.

We breathe heavily into each others' mouths for some moments. I look rather closely at his mouth. So very near to him, I can see even the tiny thread of spittle that stretches between his top left incisor and one of his bottom teeth, like the gossamer strand of a spider's web.

'Is your stomach really sensitive, Jeeves?' I ask – a question that has been waiting to pop out of my throat like a tightly-sprung jack-in-the-box since yesterday night.

'Ahhh-' he says, quite distinctly, as though it were a word. The strand of spittle snaps.

He wrenches his wrists free of my hands and I catch them again. We reach something of an impasse, me holding his hands up in the air, he pressing back with all his strength, trying to force me away from him. I am surprised to learn that he is not stronger than me. We would be fairly equally matched in a prize fight, I'm certain. I'd have always put my shirt on Jeeves at four to one, before this moment.

His cheeks are growing rather flushed. I look at his eyes, and see that the pupils are wide and expanding – pulsing outwards into his blue-grey irises like anemones.

I move towards my mouth with his, but he jerks his head away. I make another attempt and he works the same bally manoeuvre, evading my mouth, but his own falls open in a hungry sort of expression. For a goodish while we spar like this. I feint to the left and then lunge to the right, and he almost falls for the wheeze, pulling away just a fraction of a second before our lips collide. But they don't. Collide, I mean.

He leans against me for balance and I feel the thick-ish bulge in his trousers press up against my left leg. At once I release his wrists and drop to my knees, catching him in a tight hold about the waist before he can move away.

I have his arms pinned by his sides, in the circle of mine. My hands rest just on the upper curve of his buttocks, the fingers of my right hand gripping the wrist of my left, my knuckles pressed quite painfully against the hard surface of the door.

I look at the front of his trousers, the tip of my nose just touching the lump hiding beneath them.

'Let me see it,' I say, between awkward, panting breaths. 'Is it like you described it?'

He lets out the same noise I've heard him make upon discovering a breakfast egg stain upon my pyjamas. Then I am pushed backwards with some force. I land on my rump upon the carpet and, before I can register my surprise, Jeeves has made his way towards the drinks cabinet, straightening his clothes as he goes.

'A brandy and soda, Sir?' he asks, his voice soupy, but strained. Like strained soup, if you will. 'Your journey must have been tiring.'

I gather myself.

'I'm sorry, Jeeves,' I say, looking at my feet, feeling a little like a child whose ice cream has fallen on the floor. 'I didn't mean to do that.'

'Light on the soda, Sir?' he asks. Even his back seems disapproving.

'It's alright though. I won't do it again, I promise. We can carry on like before. Don't worry.'

He crosses back over to me and presses the drink into my hand, ensuring that out fingers don't brush, and retreats quickly. By the time I've scrambled to my feet, he is rearranging the perfectly-arranged cushions on the chaise longue.

'Jeeves, I...'

'Please do not speak, Sir.' He finishes arranging the cushions and stands to attention. 'The gammon I prepared for luncheon is now cold, though it might be savoury with some mustard, and I have boiled some new potatoes.'

'French mustard?' I ask, 'Or English?' I toss back my drink and place the glass on the floor beside me. Then I walk towards him.

'I beg of you not to come any closer, Sir.' His eyes appear glazed – staring into nothing, past my shoulder, like a waxwork at Madame Toussaud's. Then they flick to meet my own and meet them with such an intense stare that I can scarcely hold his gaze.

'I only have salted butter, Sir, for the potatoes – it may be too much with the salt of the gammon-'

We are inches apart now, close enough to smell each others' aftershave. I can hear that his breathing is shallow and erratic. My own is just as laboured.

I take one more step towards him, so that our chests very nearly touch.

He bends his head ever so slightly to the right. I lick at my lips. They're as bally dry and cracked as desert mud. My tongue tastes like aspic. Which is strange, as I haven't eaten any aspic in months or more.

'I wish we could talk, Jeeves,' I say. 'I wish we could talk again. Like we did...' He draws in a trembling breath. I feel his breath on my face like the touch of a hand. '...Like we did last night.' He closes his eyes, perhaps in exasperation, perhaps in recollection. 'You said such wicked things,' I go on, unable to stop myself. 'Such wicked things.' His whole form is shaking ever so slightly. 'You make me feel so wicked, in general, don't you know?'

He does not say anything. He wavers there, a solid but slightly unsteady shape between myself and the chaise longue, the curling pattern of the curtain embroidery cast across him by the sunlight behind.

Then he takes a step back and heads for the kitchen.

I sink into a comfortable chair and pour myself another B & S. I'm getting rather used to this 'pouring my own drinks' lark. I feel dashed proud of myself. Perhaps I might be able to manage jolly well without Jeeves, after all.

When Jeeves emerges from the kitchen bearing a plate of cold gammon and mustard, boiled potatoes, green beans and some species of sauce he's concocted, I move to the dining table and take a seat.

He shoves the victuals down before me with his usual precision, though as he pours the wine (a very nice Burgundy), his hold on the wine bottle wobbles, and he spills a few drops.

They bloom to the size of ha-pennies on the perfectly white tablecloth.

Before I can utter a cheerful, 'Fear not, accidents happen and all that,' he has snatched up the plate of dinner and the wine glass again. He disappears back into the kitchen and reappears in a split second, his hands empty. Then he grasps the business end of the tablecloth with both hands and whips it from the table in one sharp tug, with all the flair of a chap doing a conjuring trick. He biffs back into the kitchen, his arms full of soiled satin.

When I edge the corpus through the kitchen door, I find him at the sink, with his back to me, and his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows. I can hear the cacophonous gush of the tap running hard into the sink. His shoulders are moving with a rapid, angry sort of shudder, as though he were strangling a cat. As I approach, I notice with relief that he is _not_ in fact strangling a cat, but rather working a bar of carbolic soap furiously over the wine stain on the tablecloth, staring at the blots as though they were blood from a murder.

'I am attempting to salvage it, Sir,' he says, his voice low, rough and intent, 'Though I fear it may be ruined entirely.'

I must admit, I'm a little unnerved by his frantic scrubbing and the desperate tone of his voice. It's more emotion than I've seen wrung from the man in all the years I've known him.

'Yes, well,' I say, attempting an upbeat attitude. 'Not the end of the world, what?'

'Red wine seldom comes out, Sir,' he says, in a way that implies, 'It most certainly is the end of _my_ world.'

'Not to worry, Old Thing,' I say, a little more soothingly. 'I've never liked that tablecloth anyway.' Which is an outright lie. I'm very fond of that bally tablecloth.

He continues to scrub like the Dickens.

'Take the value of the tablecloth from my wages, Sir,' he says.

'I don't think I'll need to do that, Jeeves,' I say.

'I insist that you take it from my wages, Sir. Please.'

'I shan't,' I say, approaching peeved, now. 'You must pick out a nice new one and we'll call it "quits", what?'

'Sir!' he says, with such sharpness that I start a little. 'This is an expensive item of luxury table linen. You must take the cost of it from my wages.'

'Jeeves,' I say, 'would you stop scrubbing for a moment?'

He continues to scrub. His hands are growing so red and his knuckles so raw-looking that I fear they might start to bleed.

'Jeeves,' I say, with all the authority I can muster. 'Stop scrubbing, Man.'

'It may be that I can salvage the item for use at the breakfast table, when we have no company, Sir.'

I plunge my hands into the foamy sink, grasp the end of the tablecloth and tug hard. It slops from the depths like a great anaemic sea serpent, splashing a good quantity of water over the kitchen top, Jeeves' shirt front and the tiled floor. Jeeves maintains his hold on the other end of the cloth, and the thing pulls taut between us as I step back and attempt to wrest it from his grip. I tug harder, my hackles now risen to an altitude that would make hot air ballooners reel in fright.

Jeeves tugs harder still. I can see him spread his legs apart and plant his feet firmly on the floor. When his gaze meets mine, it's fiery and freezing all at once, like when you burn your tongue on an icy pole trying to stick it there.

We wrestle like this for quite a time, every muscle in our bodies tense, but neither of us moving more than an inch. The cloth grows so taut between us that near every drop of water has wrung out of it. I look at Jeeves' soaked shirt front, and then up at his face, and I notice that a drop of sudsy water is hanging from his left ear.

Then I make the horrendous error of moving my right foot to gain better purchase on the floor. I step upon a small puddle of water and my leg slips out from under me. I drop the tablecloth quite suddenly as my foot catches Jeeves', and throw my hands out to take hold of his elbows to save myself from falling quite hard to the floor. The damp cloth is trapped in between us, and he draws it out, holding it to one side. I look at his soaked shirtfront. I imagine his under vest and, beneath that, his nipples, stiff with the chill of the water and our proximity. And then I cannot stand it any longer. I bring my hands up to his shoulders and down to the buttons of his shirt, as he turns his head away, as though he wishes to be disassociated from anything I do. I hear him hiss, though, when I quickly open his buttons from the top to the bottom and use my fingers to claw the top of his vest down to expose his right nipple, latching upon it with my mouth and suckling. It is cold and hard, all the tiny dark hairs around it standing to attention upon goosebumps.

When I tug his shirt down to expose his other nipple and latch upon that, I hear the tablecloth slap down into the sink, and feel his hands bunch in my hair, gripping it firmly, as though he might begin a new tug of war with that.

And he does tug hard, pulling my head up until it is level with his, and opens his mouth, slightly, almost reluctantly, as though someone might be about to feed him a spoonful of medicine.

Then he opens it a little wider. I feel my own jaw drop to mirror his. He moves his mouth closer by increments, panting all the while through his nose in a queer, shaking sort of way, his cool breath washing across my cheek and tickling the hairs above my right ear. When there is barely an inch between his mouth and mine, his tongue pokes out, a little at first, and then retreats. Then it pokes out again, a little further.

My own tongue feels restless and fidgety in my mouth, and before I know quite what I'm doing, it is poking out to meet his. But his own tongue draws back.

At long last, our tongues peep out at the same moment and brush, almost accidentally, against each other. This emboldens us to poke them out again and let them touch more firmly. And our tongues press against each other like this, outside our mouths, twitching and trembling, for several long moments. His hands are still tight in my hair. I draw my own tongue back into my mouth, rolling the taste of Jeeves' saliva against my palate. Then he releases my hair with one hand and uses it to claw at my chin, dragging my jaw down and my mouth open so that he can suck my tongue from my mouth like a winkle from its shell.

He lets out a sound – somewhat impassioned, perhaps relieved, certainly impatient.

Then he tears his mouth from mine.

'Go into the living room, Sir,' he says, softly, his voice hoarse. 'Stand by the divan and wait for me.'

I nod, reluctant to leave him even for a moment, but unable to find a reason to question him.

I wait by the divan for three minutes, before he emerges once again from the kitchen, moving towards me. His shirt is fastened again.

'Perhaps we could just speak of the things we would care to do to each other, Sir,' he suggests, his breath coming rather quickly. 'Perhaps that might be enough.'

Then we come together at the same time with open mouths and thrusting tongues, panting heavily through our noses. My hands come slapping down upon his back, flat against the cool fabric of his shirt and the hot flesh beneath. I draw my tongue back from his mouth and suck his own into mine. He makes a muffled, protesting sound, as though he objects, and then relents, relaxing his mouth, moaning softly and briefly in consent. I attempt blindly to undo his shirt again, but reach only the second button.

'Sit down, Jeeves,' I say.

'I cannot,' he says.

I put my hands on his shoulders and press him down to sit on the chaise longue. Then I drag my hand through his hair, roughly, firmly, and down to his neck, spreading the shining oil of the brilliantine down to his collar. I push him backwards and position myself awkwardly on top of him, my knees astride him, and rid myself of my own suit jacket, dropping it to the floor beside us. Then I lower myself until our chests are pressed together.

We lie like this, sprawled on the sofa, all arms and legs and pieces of partly-undone clothing, and begin to kiss in earnest. Desperately, for a while, and then more gently. Fiercely, for some seconds, and then sloppily, gracelessly. With only lips and then with lips and teeth and tongue. We kiss each others' noses, chins and tongue – not the little piddling sort of kisses one bestows upon a maiden's damask cheek, but wet, biting, sucking kisses that leave our flesh sore. I lick at his nose. He chews on my chin until I fear it might begin to bleed. I bite on his bottom lip.

'We should not, Sir,' he says, wrenching his mouth away, 'It is too improper.' Then he lunges back at me and takes a bite of my mouth like it's a ripe apple.

We continue to kiss. And we are not silent. Our lips smack and our throats rumble with groans of pleasure and impatience. I never imagined the sounds, before, when I'd pictured this. Such marvellous sounds. I pull back from him to look at his face, and a string of spittle stretches between his mouth and mine. I find this so utterly topping that I thrust my tongue into his mouth again.

'Talk to me, Jeeves,' I ask again, pulling back without warning. 'I was just thrilled to Dickens by the stuff you spouted last night.'

But he will not.

I bite at his earlobe, lick at his neck and undo the rest of the buttons on his shirt.

He looks at me, his eyes lidded, his hands clenched upon the fabric of the sofa to his sides, as though he's afraid of what he might do with them, if they weren't gripping that.

'I wish you'd tell me, Jeeves,' I say. 'I wish you'd tell me what I should do.'

I suck at his neck like a vampire. He takes my face in his hands and twists my head so that he can look into my eyes.

'I am prudish, Sir,' he says. 'And I am scandalised. How are you not?' I suspect, though, that it titillates him somewhat to make this claim.

'You're not prudish, Jeeves,' I say. 'You said such things to me. You could write French Literature, you've such a depraved mind...'

I unwrap my legs from his, stand and pull him to his feet and he makes to move, I'm, not sure where, but I pull him back to me, so that his back is flush against my chest and my arms are around him. I feel for his nipples beneath his undervest and when I find them I circle them with my fingertips. He takes my hands in his and pushes them down to the hem of his vest, lifting it, pushing it upwards and placing my hands on his bare stomach. I rub at the soft skin there – he has a paunch, but it is firm, and his clothes must hide it, for this is the first time I've been aware of it.

'Sir,' he says. 'Touch me there, Sir.'

I do, rubbing my hands in slow circles, and he shudders.

He takes the middle fingertip of my right hand and guides it towards his navel, moving it in slow circles around its perimeter, and then inside it. As my other hands strays towards his belt line, I feel an insistent pressing against its underside, and realise at once that it is his member, standing so erect, desperate and firm that it is drawing the front of his trousers up into a tent.

'This is what you want, then, Jeeves?' I ask, circling my finger more firmly inside his navel. 'This is what rouses you?'

'Yes, Sir. I'm afraid, Sir.'

'I didn't know it would. So much.'

I sense, now, that we've passed niceties. He seems to have resigned himself to the circs. in which we find ourselves. Though he does not go limp and pliant in my arms, I do feel that something has altered. He is under the spell of something-or-other, and no longer cares.

'It always has, Sir. It is... a peculiarity.'

This gives me what you might call 'pause.'

'Have you ever... before?' I ask. 'This sort of escapade? I mean... with another cove?'

'No, Sir. Nor with a woman.'

'You do this to yourself then, Jeeves? When you... You use one hand to rub your stomach and the other to-'

'What do you think, Sir?'

'I think you do. I'm imagining it. I'm thinking of you, in your little room, doing just that. Doing all sorts of depraved things to yourself. Would you tell me some more of them?'

He pulls away again, and I realise that he is heading for his own bedroom. For a moment I fear that he is retiring to bed on his own, however, when he reaches the doorway he looks back at me, and I know he wishes me to follow him.

The bed in his room is awfully small. Though perhaps he cannot bring himself to lie upon the master's bed. Perhaps he wishes to lower me to his station, rather than attempting to rise to mine. Perhaps he is simply fond of his own mattress.

He closes the door behind us and, rather bizarrely, locks it, though the front door of the flat is locked, too.

There are now two locked, solid doors between us and Berkeley Square. Between us and the passers-by, in the corridor, in the street below, who pass by oblivious to the fact that a master and his manservant are doing all sorts of unspeakable and indecent things to each other in the darkness of the small, secluded room so close by.

I lie down upon the bed without asking, and he kneels over me and begins to remove my clothes, precisely and methodically, looking upon my flesh as it is revealed as though it is the flesh of some exotic, un-tasted fruit. His hands shake very slightly as he pulls down my underpants over my cockstand, and he watches it intently as it springs free, slapping damply up against my belly, hot and rosy and harder than I've ever known it to be.

I remove his clothes, making something of a hash of it. I twist off one of his shirt buttons accidentally, and get his trousers caught around his knees. But he doesn't help. He lets me struggle, face flushed and brow creased, until he is entirely bare.

His knees are almost knobbly and his legs long, his feet large though rather slender. He has plenty of hair upon his legs, though his chest is almost hairless, and his hips have a small cushion of fat upon them. His cock, as hard and erect as mine, is thick but not overly long, emerging an embarrassed red from a thick bush of dark pubic hair.

I wonder what on Earth he thinks of me. I feel the cold air on my skin, and feel rather exposed.

The first thing he does, upon having us both bare, is lie down on top of me, bringing our entire fronts into contact and squashing the breath from me. His skin is so warm that it feels fevered. Then he lifts my left arm, buries his nose into my armpit and takes a whopper of a great, heaving breath.

'You know, Old Thing,' I say, quite taken aback, 'You're a strange one.'

He doesn't seem in the least offended by this accusation. He pokes out his tongue and licks at the sweat under my arm, sending rather a shiver through me from my head to my toes. Then he says,

'Most decent people would think we had surpassed strangeness many hours ago, Sir,' and I can't deny the truth of it. I let him lick at my armpit all he wants. 'I find this very strange,' he says, pulling away, 'Do you not?'

'Rather,' I say. And then, more absently, 'Rather.'

The thing that has happened here is that we've Passed the Second Drink. You see, when one sets out for a night with one's friends with the determined thought that you'll have a couple but come home sober, there comes a point, after the second drink, when you can't remember why you shouldn't have a third. And from that point onwards, you descend into a haze of half-remembered exotic cocktails, piggy back rides, dancing girls and champagne glass waterfalls.

I feel that this analogy is pertinent.

He bites at my mouth again, pushing his tongue inside, and I taste my own sweat. It is rather unpleasant.

'Talk to me, Jeeves,' I try for a third time, pulling my mouth away. This time it seems that attrition has worn him down.

'-Have you ever done such things before, Sir?' he asks, spreading his legs ever so slightly, so that his knees lie either side of mine. His prick is pressing into the hollow between my legs, the wet tip of it just touching my testicles, and it has happened so unceremoniously that I am almost disappointed. 'With another man?' he asks.

'Not in the least. I mean. In the potting shed, you know – I used to have a bit of foolery in there with Cousin Angela, what? But not past fourteen. And not properly. Not in the least.'

'What did you do with your cousin Angela in the potting shed, Sir?'

'Oh, you know, what? Few kisses. Looked down her knickers. On one occasion it was proposed we play Doctors.'

'Doctors, Sir?'

'Doctors, Jeeves.'

He draws himself up on his knees, his hands on his thighs. I can see clearly now that his cock is so stiff that it holds itself upright against his belly.

'Would you like to play Doctors with me, Sir?'

I think that this is the most thrilling suggestion in the universe.

'Oh yes. Yes. I rather would. Very much, in fact.'

He looks at me heatedly, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue.

'I shall lie back, Sir,' he says, and I can see that he is lost now, utterly, beyond embarrassment or self-censorship, 'and you may examine me.'

'I'd like that,' I say.

We slowly shift positions on the bed, he taking my spot, me taking his.

'How did your games go, Sir?' he asks, looking up at me, his chest rising and falling with expansive breaths.

'How did they go?' I try to remember.

'How?' he asks.

'She'd have a pain,' I say. I look at his smooth, pink, unblemished form and cannot invent any ailment.

'I have a pain, Sir,' he says, without hesitation. 'Here,' he says, moving his hand to his stomach, just above his navel. I notice that he has said 'Sir' and not 'Doctor.' I don't correct him. It would be churlish.

'Do you?' I ask, my mind whirring, searching for anything to say, unsure whether I am more amused or aroused by this role playing.

'Yes,' he says. 'Such a terrible pain. Can you help me?' He is moving his fingers in a slow, tight circle over his skin, arousing himself shamelessly. I watch his prick jump and spill a drop of liquid in his arousal.

'Let me see,' I say.

I reach out and move his hand aside, taking up the motion myself. He closes his eyes and swallows wetly.

'Does that hurt?' I ask.

'Yes,' he says.

'What else should I do?' I ask.

'You are the Doctor, Sir,' he says. 'You could listen.'

Suddenly the idea of pressing my ear to his hot stomach is delicious. I lean down and bend my head, lowering it until my ear is flat against his belly, my earlobe just touching the top of his navel. His flesh scalds mine. I can feel the tiny, downy hairs on his skin against whole curve of my ear, and the light sheen of sweat, sticking my skin to his.

I can hear his stomach gurgling, quietly digesting the remains of his lunch.

'It's a mystery,' I whisper. 'Everything sounds...' I turn my head and lick at the spot, causing his stomach to contract with a jolt.

'Does it hurt anywhere else?' I ask, in a voice I feel may be desperate.

'Yes,' he says, fingering his hipbone. 'Here.'

I lick at his hipbone.

'Here,' he says, brushing the top of his thigh with his fingertips. I kiss the flesh there. 'Here,' he says, touching his right knee. I lick at it.

'And I have a pain here,' he says, 'Sir.' I can scarcely believe it when he lifts his knees, spreads his legs apart and uses his hands to part his buttocks, exposing his tight, dark anus.

'Oh Lord,' I say, falling from the game like a child from a spinning roundabout, unable to stop myself from dropping to my front on the bed, taking his buttocks in my hands and pushing my face forward to see it more closely.

It pulses at the inadvertent puff of my breath.

'Ah,' he says, from above me.

I push my tongue forward to touch it ever-so-gently, and it convulses.

'Ah,' he says, again.

I fondle it with my index finger, and his knees draw up higher from the bed, his breath shuddering and heaving.

'What am I doing, Jeeves?' I ask. Blood is pounding in my ears. I fear I will miss his reply, the thundering rush is so loud.

'You're touching me, Sir,' he replies.

'Touching you where, Jeeves?' I ask, fearing I am pushing him too far. Fearing I will break whatever spell is cast over us.

'Touching my backside, Sir, and the hole in between.'

'What might a crude person call it? A peasant on a street corner?'

I can feel the word longing to groan out of him.

'My... my arsehole, Sir. You have your finger just inside my arsehole.'

'Do you enjoy it?'

'I do.'

'Do you want more of me in there than a finger?'

'I do, Sir. Have you thought of it?'

'I've thought of it. I've thought of my... prick in there. Right inside there.'

Now, as much as it can, it feels like we are two boys playing a forbidden game. We are trying out wicked words we've never dared to use before grown-ups. Baiting each other. Competing in our daring use of filth. Seeing how far the other will go.

'I am very hard, Sir,' he says. 'I've thought of you too. I've thought of your prick. How I'd like to coax it to stand hard and straight for me. And mine. Would you let me slip my prick between your legs?'

'I would. After I'd put mine inside you.'

He closes his legs all of the sudden, forcing me to sit back or have my head crushed by his thighs.

'Speak to me like I imagined last night,' he says, at once. 'Tell me something awful.' He catches my hands in his, though it seems more a gesture of combat than of affection.

'Gosh... I. Gosh.'

I think back. I try to remember what he wished me to say.

'You're... you're a servant,' I say.

'Yes, Sir.' He seems delighted. He lets go of my left hand. His fingers crawl up over his hip, towards his prick, stalling in the hollow of his groin. 'Yes. I am.'

'You're... low,' I say, rocking slightly on the bed, against nothing but thin air, using his straight, solid arm for leverage. 'You're reprehensible.'

'Yes,' he says, sliding his hand to grasp his prick fully, beginning to pull himself with slow, hard strokes.

'Oh God. Ah. Jeeves,' I feel the tip of my own cock touch my belly. It is throbbing with every pulse of my heartbeat. 'You look so depraved,' I say. I am warming to my theme. 'Lying there spread beneath me,' I go on. 'I could do anything I wanted with you, couldn't I?' He pulls on himself a little faster. 'I could order you. Order you to do anything I pleased.'

'You could, Sir,' he says, his eyes narrow slits. There is sweat upon his forehead.

'Your Mother's a cook, isn't she, Jeeves?' I say.

'Yes, Sir,' he says, the rhythm of his hand faltering, clearly a little thrown by this unusual avenue in the conversation.

'What makes you think that the son of a cook has the right to lie like that, underneath a man like me, Jeeves?'

'I don't know, Sir,' he says, his arousal clearly overcoming his surprise and discomfort, 'I can't imagine.'

'It's a bally liberty. That's what it is,' I say. I watch him touch himself, and I am aroused beyond belief. 'I'll bet you've thought all sorts of indecent things about me, too. Haven't you?' He does not answer. His eyes are glazed. 'Haven't you?'

'Yes, Sir.'

'It's disgusting. You disgust me.'

'Ah-'

'You're an invert. You're perverted. You're the lowest of the low. You're not fit to crawl on the-'

All at once, with surprising suddenness, long spurts of semen erupt from the head of his prick as it is squeezed mercilessly in his fisting grasp, splattering up across his belly, milky and thick. The sinews in his arms stand out like piano wire. He has a look on his face of intense concentration. Almost of pain.

After long moments, the convulsing stops, and I look at his filthy belly, strung with ribbons of his own seed.

I bend and lick it off him.

I lick all around his stomach, following the trails of his seed like avenues on a map until I have cleaned his entire belly of semen and it is glistening with my saliva instead of his ejaculate.

Then I lean up and kiss him with my mouth full.

As I do so, I part his legs with my hands and slide myself inside him. I feel him tense and cry out at the sudden intrusion, but he does not buck me off. I thrust three times before I come off quite violently, feeling a little as though I am about to throw up the remains of my breakfast.

I do not, though.

I fall on top of him, my arms splayed out to the sides, extremely aware of the points of his nipples prodding my chest.

I don't really know what to say, don't you know?

I suspect he doesn't really, either.

There are no words, you see, really. For this moment.


	3. Chapter 3

At one in the morning, I wake to the sound of the piano.

It can be no one else but Mr. Wooster. I am unsurprised that he has not remained long in bed with me – it is a hot night, and for him, still early. Not even quite his bed time. I myself have slept in short bursts since we first fell asleep, beside each other, not quite touching, at just past nine o clock.

It worries me to think that Mr. Wooster has likely remained awake, watching me. Studying the twitching shift of my eyes behind my eyelids, as I dreamt of nothing in particular.

Mr. Wooster is playing a song I do not recognise. It is perhaps something he has composed himself. In my dream, I had been watching him sing it, though there were no words. He stood at the foot of the bed in the dark, though there was just enough light to see his dark mouth opening and closing. Out of it came the sound of the piano.

I sit up quickly, startlingly aware of my nakedness beneath the sheet. It is dark in the room, but a hard shaft of light from the open bedroom door cuts a rectangle of pale orange upon the floor. I place the flats of my hands on the mattress to either side of me and squeeze, convincing myself of my consciousness, stitching together memories of last night with loose, frail thread. I am atop the sheets, and my sweat is drying slightly in the cooler air from the hallway.

As the fog of sleep disperses, I recognise another sound, accompanying the piano in percussion. It is the rain, falling heavily and relentlessly against the bedroom window, thundering like the faraway feet of a thousand running men.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The air in the room is stifling, but heavy with the clean, damp smell of the thunderstorm outside.

I walk into the living room, naked.

Mr. Wooster startles a little when he sees me, but carries on playing.

'Sorry, Old Thing,' he says, 'I didn't mean to wake you.' It is clear, however, that he did. He looks restless – desperate for amusement or distraction. His shoulders twitch, more impatiently than nervously. I can tell, though, that he still fears I might flee.

And his fears are not unfounded.

I had considered it.

In the quiet half-hour between ten and half-past-ten, when Mr. Wooster had fallen into a brief and exhausted sleep, I contemplated taking his car and driving far from here. The details of the plan, up to the moment of my departure, were rendered in intricate detail on the canvas of my mind. I would leave him no note, nor any trace that I ever existed. I would pack my things silently, without rousing him – I am schooled in the art of moving silently, outside of the lazily-drawn circle of Mr. Wooster's awareness.

All this I knew I would do, up to the moment of starting the engine. From then I would be lost. I do not know to where I would drive, or for what purpose. I would, of course, have the car returned to him. I am no thief.

I do not know, either, what made me reject this notion. For some moments it was so clearly formed in my mind that I was almost galvanised into action, and I could feel my muscles twitch in readiness to rise from the bed.

Yet I am still here.

Mr. Wooster's chest is bare, and I look at the smooth, pale skin stretched over it. He is wearing his underpants, but is otherwise entirely bare – his bare feet flex upon the pedals dextrously, his toes spreading out and bunching with the rhythm of the tune.

The melody fits no genre. It is not quite jazz. Certainly not Classical. Though it is too complex and unpredictable to be Modern. I rather like it.

As I stand, at a distance, watching him unnoticed, the music writes a notion across my mind. I walk back into my bedroom, and dress, quickly. My hands tremble as I slip on my shoes and socks and fasten my cufflinks.

I slip from the bedroom, and walk to the door, taking my bowler hat noiselessly from the coat stand as I quickly and quietly unlock it and step out into the hallway, closing the door behind me.

The unbroken melody, muted through the wood of the door, tells me that Mr. Wooster is oblivious to my departure.

I glance left and right down the corridor. It is empty.

I tear at my tie, loosening the knot, and undo the top button of my shirt. I bend down and undo one shoelace. I tilt my bowler hat so that it sits skew-whiff on my head.

Then I rap loudly and un-rhythmically on the door.

The music stops abruptly.

I rattle at the door handle once, twice, and then three times, before I hear the soft pad of Mr. Wooster's footsteps approach. I realise that he may have been waiting for me to rise, dress and answer the door for him. He is unused to answering his own door when I am in the flat.

The moment I see the handle depress with the pressure of his hand on its other side, I slip my key into the lock and fall quite deliberately through the door, stumbling towards him, steadying myself against the wall. I lean back, closing the door behind me with the weight of my body falling against it.

He is astonished – puzzled and wide-eyed. He looks very thin, in the stark light of the living room – he has put on all the lights, large lamps and small, and the effect is as dazzling as daytime. I can see the shadows cast in the hollows of his lean body – under his chin, beneath his ribs and his arms.

The one-o-clock shadow of stubble on his chin and cheeks.

I look at him intently.

'What in the world are you playing at, Jeeves?'

It's a good question. What in the world am I playing at? Why, when I should be driving far from here, battling the rain and the thunder to place myself miles from this dangerous and unfamiliar situation, am I here, playing this game with him?

Hoping desperately that it will arouse him, and persuade him to bugger me again?

'I was at a Ganymede Club function, Sir,' I say, unfocusing my eyes, and speaking with a hint of a slur. I bend my knees and slide my back a little down the door, so that I am looking up at him, slightly, rather than directly in the eye. 'It was Mr. Darlington's birthday.'

'Oh,' he says, at first as though he actually thinks it might be true. Confused, for I can't have been, can I? I was in bed, you see. And then, 'Oh,' as the game finally dawns upon him. As he recalls our conversation from two nights ago. The very first fantasy he shared with me. There is barely-contained revelation and excitement in his voice.

'Yes, Sir,' I say, creasing the right corner of my mouth into a lazy smile. 'I apologise for my... somewhat late return.'

He looks me up and down, perusing my state of semi-dishabille, his eyes aflame.

'Are you quite alright, Jeeves?' he asks, his voice thick. He takes a step towards me.

I push myself forward, as though making an attempt at a step towards him, before falling back heavily against the door.

'I believe so, Sir,' I say. I fix him with a pointedly unfocussed gaze. 'I might, however, have imbibed more than was proper.'

He takes in a deep breath, and I watch his Adam's apple bob, the muscles flex in his throat, as he swallows.

'Good Lord, Jeeves,' he says, and his voice sounds strange – reverberating within his chest, as though it has opened into a hollow stone cavern. He speaks with the forced inflection of an actor, but also something more. A fevered willingness to imagine that this situation is real. 'You're under the surface.'

'I fear so, Sir,' I say, and make another attempted step towards him. This time, I deliberately fall forward into his arms. He catches me clumsily, his right knee impacting mine. 'I may need you to help me to my bed.'

'Of course, Old Thing,' he says, too eagerly to maintain the facade of the role-play. 'Put your arm around me.' I do so, with an expansive, un-coordinated gesture, bringing it down heavily upon his shoulders. I feel the soft warmth of his side, pressed against mine from our armpits to our feet.

'It was an enjoyable function,' I say, idly, in a sing-song voice, leaning my head slightly towards his, pressing my weight against him and guiding our steps slightly off-course. 'Mr. Darlington has just turned fifty, and will soon be retiring...'

'I don't believe I know the cove,' he says, quietly, as we reach the door to my bedroom.

'You have yet to make his acquaintance, Sir,' I say. We reach the edge of my bed. It is still unmade. I have neglected to make it before I left the room to commence this play.

I can scarcely believe this.

I can scarcely bring myself to care.

As he brings his hands up to my shoulders and steadies me, standing me square before the bed, the backs of his knees touching the mattress, I fall against him again.

Trapping him against the mattress. We lean against the bed like this, my front against his, I leaning forward, my weight bending him backwards at an unnatural angle of almost twenty degrees.

'Sir,' I say, breathily, into his face.

'Yes, Jeeves,' he says, licking his lips, his face so close that his tongue almost touches my nose.

'You are hard, Sir.'

'Christ, yes,' he says, and rubs himself against me unambiguously. I press him forward with an ounce more strength, and we topple onto the bed, bouncing quite comically, he tearing at my tie, I taking handfuls of the flesh of his thighs, both of us moving every part of ourselves against each other, chaotically, involuntarily, uninhibitedly.

'Jeeves,' he says, in between heaving breaths, 'you can't really be foxed, can you?'

'No, Sir,' I say. 'I am perfectly sober.'

'Dashed convincing,' he murmurs, his mouth open against my chest. 'The stage beckons.'

I slap a hand down upon his back, pressing him against me, unheeding of whether I hurt him – I feel I must let out some of my energy, my frustration, before I snap – scream, or bite at him so hard that I draw blood.

He hardly seems to notice. We write against each other for this for some time. Eventually, I sit back and remove all of my clothing quickly and unceremoniously, desperate to be naked against him, and descend back upon him. I become lost in the feel and the smell of him.

'Christ, Jeeves,' he says, tearing his teeth away from my tongue, 'I'm scorching.'

He rolls from atop me and propels himself from the bed, tearing back the curtains. I move instinctively to cover my dignity, though I know we are too high for any soul to see into the room. He cracks open the window and throws it wide, letting in the sharp smell of ozone and the reek of wet roads. I watch, entranced, as he thrusts his head and shoulders out of the window and lets out an abandoned 'Whoop!' into the night, pulling himself back into the room and turning towards me, his hair plastered down and his face streaming with rainwater.

I want to do more than kiss him. I want to consume him.

I have heard people say of beautiful babies, or endearing children, 'My goodness. My goodness. Couldn't you just eat him up?' I always found this a bizarre and somewhat repulsive expression of endearment.

Until.

Until this moment, when I know with certainty that if I could, I would eat this human being, whole, and keep him inside me, safe, our bodies fused forever and my hunger for him finally sated. I would be the only way to truly appease my appetite for him.

When he reaches the bed again, I shift to sit on its edge, reaching up to his face with my hands and dragging my fingers down his wet cheeks. He has left the window wide open, and the air in the room is growing wetter, flecks of rain escaping from the outside atmosphere to pepper our hot skin with points of ice-cool. The curtains billow with gusts of warm wind.

I stand to, intending take his mouth in a deep kiss, and he draws me up towards me, turns me around and sits down upon the edge of the bed himself.

'Step back a little, Jeeves,' he says. I do so. 'Whopper of a storm, what?' he goes on.

'Indeed, Sir,' I say.

There is no question – no discussion of the fact – that we shall continue to call each other by the names we are accustomed to employ. We should, perhaps, properly, having attained this level of intimacy, be calling each other by our Christian names, or some other ridiculous terms of endearment. We should, but we are not. He calls me 'Jeeves,' and I call him, 'Sir,' and this is how we think of each other.

The crackle of the rain, louder now that the window is opened, sounds like the white noise of a bad telephone line.

'Jeeves,' he says, in a low, deliberate tone, 'Your phone's ringing, Old Thing.'

'Is it, Sir?' I ask.

'Yes. It's me on the line.'

'Good Evening, Sir,' I say.

'Good Evening, Jeeves. What are you doing?'

'I am in bed, Sir.'

'In bed? Me, too. What are you doing in bed?'

'I am reading, Sir.'

'Reading what?'

'A volume of Spinoza.'

'Are you?'

'Yes, Sir.'

'No you're not.'

'No, Sir?'

'No.'

'No. I believe you're behaving otherwise.'

'You doubt my word, Sir?'

'Rather.'

'What do you believe I am doing, Sir?'

'I believe you're touching yourself.'

The rain pricks my back like acupuncture needles. The sound of it fills my head – clears it of all other thoughts outside this room.

'Yes. Yes, Sir. You're right. I am... I am touching myself.'

I do not move, however. I remain standing, straight-backed, six feet from where he sits on the bed, my feet slightly apart. My cock hardens without physical encouragement, thickening and bobbing upwards to point towards him. 'Can you guess how I am going about it?'

'I can picture it precisely, Old Thing. You're standing.'

It is already unbearably stiff, and leaking.

'Yes. You're standing with your back straight and your cock so hard that it might be a coat hook. You've got one hand wrapped around it, and with the other, you're rubbing slow circles over your belly with the flat of your palm.'

I follow his instructions to the letter.

'Sir-'

'You're working at yourself shamelessly. I can picture it so clearly.'

'Sir-'

'I'm rather fond of it, you know, Jeeves?'

'Fond of what, Sir?'

'Your belly, Jeeves. I think it may be my favourite part of you.'

'Sir, I cannot...'

'I would never have known, Jeeves, had I not seen you bare, that you have the most fascinating little paunch. Just the firmest protruding little tummy. Your clothes entirely hide it, don't you know?'

'I am glad, Sir.'

'Tosh. Now that I know how it stirs you, I think I shall never tire of touching it.'

'No, Sir?'

'No. Right now I'm imagining licking it. With the flat of my tongue, until you shudder.'

At that, my patience snaps, and I move forward, without taking my hand from my prick, until I am directly before Mr. Wooster, close enough to feel his breath upon my skin. He tugs me towards him with his hands upon my waist. I look down at him, my eyes lidded, as he pokes out his tongue and laps at my belly, eagerly and messily, like a dog showing appreciation for its master. I shudder and tremble, my hands convulsing upon the back of his neck.

'Do you...' I say, my voice low and hoarse, 'do you have something of this nature, Sir? Something that sends you quite mad?'

'I don't think so,' he says, playing the tip of his tongue along the curve that marks the divide between my lower belly and groin. 'I quite like having my back tickled.'

I huff out a breath of laughter and bring my hands up to the back of his head. He catches them in his own.

'Don't interfere,' he says, holding my hands out to the sides, moving his head in precisely the way he wants to. He licks in circles, outwards from my navel to the edges of my stomach, the bottom of my ribcage, the top of my pubis. His slithering tongue makes the muscles of my abdomen clench and shiver – the hairs on my arms stand erect, despite the heat, and my hands contract around his fingers, clutching them tight.

This, I think – this is sex. This is what, all my life, I have been sidestepping. What I have been missing. I have been living in a monochrome moving picture. Black ties and white shirts, white socks and black cummerbunds. I have stepped, at last, into the reality of life, frantic, messy and un-staged, and it is awash with colours. The soft beige of Mr. Wooster's flesh. The hot pink of his high cheeks. The blue-yellow of the bruise on his thigh, from a drunken fall five nights ago.

'Hang on,' he says, 'I'll get my pants off.' He pushes me backwards, leaving the spit on my belly to cool, and tugs his underpants awkwardly down to his ankles, lifting his buttocks in the air, allowing his damp, ruddy member to bob free. 'What do you think, Jeeves?' he asks.

I am not entirely sure what he is asking me, but the answer 'yes,' is on the tip of my tongue. It worries me that I wish to do everything with him.

I might as well. We have done enough already that any more can scarcely debouch me further.

'What if I asked you,' he says, spreading his legs a little further, 'to get on your knees for me?'

I do not need any further encouragement. I drop to my knees hard enough to feel the jar up to my hips, and bring my mouth to his member – it bobs away, rudely, and I attempt to catch it with my hands – I feel un-coordinated and clumsy in a way I seldom have before. I grasp it and guide it to my tongue, and lick it from the tip to the base. I wrap my lips around the head of his cock, and taste his pre-ejaculate – it tastes, oddly, of rainwater, though my entire head, my sinuses and my taste buds are awash with the scent of the storm, and I can taste nothing else. I bob my head up and down upon him once, twice, and then pull back to look at his prick, solid and excited, shining with my saliva.

He tugs me up by my armpits.

'Sit down, Jeeves,' he says. 'Sit down on top of me.'

I do. I straddle him, one leg either side of his, our faces so close that we cannot focus properly on each other's features.

Our cocks knock against each other cursorily, and twitch in acknowledgement. He wraps his fist around mine and lifts it, placing his right hand upon my buttock and lifting me, so that he can move his hand underneath, dragging his fingers along my cleft.

'Do you want me to, Jeeves?' he asks, though I can tell it is merely a formality.

I nod, almost imperceptibly. It is perhaps more like an involuntary twitch of the head than a deliberate nod. But he is watching me closely, for any sign, any excuse.

I take his hand, turn it palm-upwards and spit in it, and then move it down to his prick, curling my own around it and urging him to coat himself in the wetness.

'Is this enough?' he asks.

I take his hand back, spit on it again and repeat the procedure.

He pushes himself into me, quite slowly, but somewhat too quickly for my liking. He was in me so briefly last night – and I recall, with something of a shudder, the sharp flash of pain and the few moments of intense discomfort until he spent and withdrew. It was so fast, however, and so fleeting that the memory of the pain made only a tiny blot on my consciousness. They say we cannot truly remember pain, and I believe it is almost true.

Now, I experience again this very specific species of discomfort. It steals my breath for a moment. I refuse, however, to reveal any of it to Mr. Wooster. I bite upon my tongue, and just as the pain in my mouth is beginning to distract me from the pain where he enters me, the sensation changes subtly, an aching eroticism bleeding in at its edges.

He is looking into my eyes, quite fiercely, licking his lips over and over again. Pausing to breathe hot breath into my mouth.

When he begins to move, the sensation alters once more, growing into something uncanny, base and shamefully satisfying. It is as intimate and exposed a feeling as I might feel relieving myself in front of him. At once I feel embarrassed. But he pulls me closer and wraps his hands around the back of my neck, holding me tight.

This motion drives him slightly deeper into me, and the tip of his prick knocks firmly against my prostate – this I have found, previously, with my fingers, but never managed to hit so surely or firmly as his prick does now. At this, my embarrassment dissolves and I begin to move, ever so slightly, back against him.

We pick up pace, by increments, until we are moving rather frantically – until I am, quite unthinkably, bouncing upon him, aided by the eager, sweat-slick grip of his hands, which have moved to the flesh on my hips. He squeezes the soft cushioning of fat there – kneads it like bread dough, and I follow the urging of his hands, breathless in the moments when I rise, waiting for the sharp, sick, shock of pleasure that dances up my spine when I descend.

'Jeeves,' he pants, no voice, all breath. 'What am I...?'

'What are you doing, Sir? Is this... what you mean to ask?'

His head bobs in a desperate nod.

'You are buggering me,' I say, without hesitation. Delighted that we already know the rules of this particular game. He asks me, and I tell him.

'What might a...?'

'...What might a?'

'...What might a...?'

'...a peasant, Sir? A peasant on a street corner? What might _they_ call it?'

'That's it.'

'Fucking, Sir.'

'Yes, Jeeves.'

'Fucking. You are fucking me. Your prick is inside me, and you are-'

I cannot continue – my throat closes in a spasmodic swallow, physical sensation swilling inside of me like a large, rich dinner that's unsettled my stomach. I bring my forehead to rest in the crook of his neck, and find my voice again.

'Where might he be watching us from, Sir?'

'Who's that?'

'The uncouth man? Where would he sit? The crude young man who would say, "Look at those two fellows. A gentleman and his manservant. Fucking."'

'Oh Christ, Jeeves.' He shivers at the idea, squeezing at me harder, pushing into me more rapidly. 'He could have the chair behind you.'

'Is he watching us, Sir?'

'I believe he is. The bounder.'

'Is he scandalised?'

'Undoubtedly.'

'Send him away, then.'

He pounds at me for some minutes more. I look down at my prick, squashed helplessly between his belly and mine.

'Who is in the chair now, Sir?' I ask.

'Oh-'

'Who?' I ask.

'Do you know, I believe...' he looks over my shoulder at the empty chair, conjuring someone there by thought, '...I believe it's Florence Craye.'

'Oh dear, Sir.'

'Good Lord, it is.'

'Is she...' I cannot gain the leverage I want. I push him to sit further back on the bed, and bring my knees up onto the mattress. From here I can descend upon him in full, long strokes, impacting my prostate each and every time my buttocks touch his thighs. '...Is she aroused, Sir?' I ask.

'Do you know, I think she is,' he pants. 'Her cheeks are flushed.'

'Who's there now?' I ask.

'Bingo. Bingo Little,' he says.

'Mr. Little, Sir?'

'Yes,' he says, biting repeatedly at my shoulder. 'I think he wants to join...'

I clutch at his hair. This is unbelievably protracted. Prolonged and torturous beyond the reaches of my imagination. All of my fantasies, all of my dreamings, had painted proceedings as swift, uncontrolled and explosive. I had never imagined that it could be quite like this.

But my patience is infinite. I never want it to end.

'Who is there now, Sir? Who is in the chair?'

He pauses for a second, looking into my eyes, dazed and exhausted. 'Aunt Agatha,' he says.

I fall still for a moment.

'Your Aunt?' I ask, quite shocked. For a second my stomach turns over – I cannot believe that he would find such a thing erotic.

Then I think – perhaps she is the obvious person to place there. He has always wanted to defy her. Through all of his acquiescence, all of his downtrodden obedience, he has always longed to do precisely the opposite of what she wants. To scandalise her.

The thought even begins to arouse me.

And I begin to move again.

'What is she saying, Jeeves?' he asks.

'I would imagine, Sir, that she is saying nothing.' Our frantic pace has now resumed. 'She is not scandalised, for she does not allow herself to understand what she is seeing. To keep herself from fainting, or from shrieking – to keep her sanity – she must tell herself that we are simply dancing. Innocently and charmingly dancing. In some corner of her mind, however – somewhere that still remembers what it was like to have a man inside her – she knows that we are in fact fucking. That this is what this is. Carnal, uncouth, horrifying, illegal – you are sodomising me, Sir, and I am enjoying it. I am riding you...'

'Good Lord. Good Lord. Jeeves – you... You keep talking. Keep talking. You're a marvel.'

'You're a marvel,' I fire back at him, triumphantly, clutching at his still-damp hair.

I become aware again of the rain. I wonder, what would happen, now, if the roof were drawn away, and the wet sky above us emptied itself down onto Mr. Wooster's soft, perfect furnishings, and he and I in the centre of them, rutting away at each other like nothing else existed.

'Could you come off, Jeeves,' he asks, into my mouth, 'at any moment?'

'Yes, Sir.'

'Are you holding back, because it feels so good?'

'Yes, Sir.'

'Shall we spend at the same time? What do you say?'

I nod, and tip my head back.

'What shall we do? Do you want to do it on the count of three?'

I shake my head.

'You decide, then. You decide when we should. Give me a word. Say something, and I'll know.'

'When I stand watching you in the mornings, Sir...'

'Yes, Jeeves?'

'With your tea tray in my hands...'

'Yes?'

'Watching you breathe quietly beneath the covers?'

'Mm? Yes?'

'I have always, from the first time I allowed myself to linger there, wished to crawl beneath them, take you in my mouth and work at you until you sang like a bird.'

At this, he begins to come off – I feel it, distinctly, warm and unusual, spreading into a place deep inside of me. I give a little cry, and begin to spend as well. Small, unimpressive splashes of seed at first, erupting erratically and sporadically from the head of my prick and then, at last, longer ribbons, dripping down messily over the backs of my fingers. He watches it all, rapt, still moving inside me, groaning low in his throat, perhaps at the sensation of his orgasm, perhaps at the spectacle of mine. I watch it, too, with a kind of detached wonder, as though it were not my own appendage, and someone else's pleasure.

We hold each other, unmoving, for minutes afterwards, stuck together with sweat and semen, and frozen with lethargy.

'Sir,' I say, in a voice more reedy and childlike than I had intended.

'Jeeves,' he replies in precisely the same tone.

'This,' I say, more sternly, without removing my head from where it is buried in the crook of his neck, 'is a dangerous game.'

'I know, Old Thing,' he says.

'No, Sir,' I say. 'I don't believe you do. It is far more serious than you realise.'

'I realise it's serious, Jeeves,' he says.

I still do not believe that he does.

We have interfered terribly with the equilibrium of things. This does not feel, to me, like fate. It does not feel, entirely, as though it were meant to happen. We have undoubtedly broken the rules.

We shall have to play very quietly, and very carefully.

'Close the window, Jeeves,' he says, snuffling softly into my shoulder.

I lay him gently on the bed, and do so.


End file.
